San Diego tonight, with Rio and Dave.”
She took a step back from him. “Oh, my God. You’re serious.”
“Flights are still impossible and you said yourself that you need time to talk to Ted—”
“I said that, yes,” she said. “But time as in a few hours. Another day at the most.”
“And I think you’ll need longer than that,” he said.
“Well, you’re wrong,” Tasha told him. “You’re doubling down on your incredible wrongness and—oh, shit, you’re in a hospital.” She rubbed her forehead as if she had a sudden, severe headache. “Of course you’re freaked out and everything feels wrong. But please, please, please Thomas, trust me.”
Tasha could feel her eyes welling with tears as she stood there, a polite three feet away from this man she loved with all of her heart, unable to throw herself into his arms and beg him not to be stupid.
“Yeah, I’m freaked out,” he said quietly. “Yeah, I hate hospitals, but... Tash, I really think it’s a good idea. Not just for you, but for me, too. I’ll go with Rio and Dave. That way we’ll get back to Coronado as quickly as we can. I think it’s best if we leave tonight.”
“Please just wait until tomorrow,” she said. “Andrea got us all rooms at a hotel that’s just down the street—”
“The admiral needs us in California.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “It can wait twelve hours. You haven’t slept in days.”
“I can sleep in the car.”
“God, you really want to go, don’t you?” she asked, turning her head so that the guards couldn’t see that her tears were about to escape.
“I want you to be happy,” Thomas whispered, and when she looked up at him, she could’ve sworn that he was going to start to cry, too.
“Great,” she said. “Fantastic. You will make me instantly happy by trusting me. Just give me a few hours—get out of here, go take a shower at the hotel, then wait for me in the hotel lobby. I’ll be there as soon as I talk to Ted.”
He was already shaking his head, like he couldn’t even muster up enough faith and trust for a few short hours, when the elevator bonged.
And the doors opened.
“Tasha!”
It was Jeff Willems. He was alone in the large elevator but he burst out of it as if he’d been physically expelled.
“Jeff!” Tasha said. “Where did you come from?”
It was possible he didn’t hear her, he was vibrating on such a high frequency as he looked wildly up and down the corridor—from Thomas to Tasha and then to the guards at the end of the hall.
“Is that his room?” He looked bedraggled and rumpled—a far cry from his usual impeccably groomed self. Apparently he’d stolen one of the queen’s jets and piloted it back to the airfield near the ski lodge, all to create a diversion so Tedric could make the trip by car. Jeff had been arrested and spent at least part of the day in a local lockup. “Tasha, my God, they said Ted got shot, but no one would give me any details—just that he needed a CAT scan of his head before he gets an MRI. Was he shot in the head?”
He was so frantic, he was shaking.
“He’s fine,” she told Jeff, even as she pushed Thomas into the open elevator—even though he still hadn’t promised to wait for her at the hotel. “He was not shot in the head. Teddy didn’t even hit his head—the queen’s just being the queen and insisting the doctors give him every medical test available, out of an abundance of caution. His head is fine. Trust me, okay?”
Jeff nodded gratefully. At least someone trusted her. “But they said he was shot.”
“He was, in the leg. It’s not bad, but when he fell, he messed up his ankle. The MRI’s for that—they’re checking for torn ligaments. Really, though, he’s gonna be okay. We’ll help him with the PT—I promise, he’ll be back to hiking mountain trails in no time.”
Thomas was holding the elevator door open to keep it from leaving with him in it. Tasha could tell from the growing realization in his eyes that he was doing the why’s-this-guy-so-upset math and coming up with a very accurate Jeff plus Ted equaled Ted absolutely didn’t love Tasha the way Thomas thought he did.
“Tasha,” Thomas said.
“I can’t,” she told him curtly. “Not right now.” She gave her full attention back to Jeff. “That’s Teddy’s room, with the guards outside. Go in there, there’s a bathroom—wash your face and breathe.